For example, Mariam Farahat, a mother of three, was elected in Gaza. She used to be a mother of six but three of her sons self-detonated on suicide missions against Israel. She’s a household name to Palestinians, known as Um Nidal — Mother of the Struggle — and, at the rate she’s getting through her kids, the Struggle’s all she’ll be Mother of.

So let me see. On the one hand, we have a regime that is pressing full steam ahead with its nuclear program and whose president has threatened to wipe another sovereign state off the face of the map.

And, on the other side of the negotiations, we have Her Britannic Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. A member of the “EU3” — the Franco-German-British team Washington has let take the lead in negotiations with Iran — Jack Straw has been at pains to emphasize that no military action against Tehran is being contemplated by him or anybody else. But in a sign that he’s losing patience with the mullahs, Straw’s officials have indicated that they’re prepared to consider the possibility of possibly considering the consideration of a possible motion on considering sanctions for the U.N. Security Council to consider the possibility of considering.

But don’t worry, they’re not escalating this thing any more than necessary. Initially, Britain is considering “narrowly targeted sanctions such as a travel ban on Iranian leaders.”

That’ll show ’em: Iranian missiles may be able to leave Iranian airspace, but the deputy trade minister won’t. No more trips to Paris for the spring collections or skiing in Gstaad for the A-list ayatollahs.

2005 was already the year of the demagogue, having been dominated for months by the endlessly echoed falsehood that the president “lied us into war.” But the year ends with yet another round of demagoguery.

Administration critics, political and media, charge that by ordering surveillance on communications of suspected al Qaeda agents in the United States, the president clearly violated the law. Some even suggest that Bush has thereby so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered. (Barbara Boxer, Jonathan Alter, John Dean and various luminaries of the left have already begun floating the idea.) The braying herds have already concluded, Tenet-like, that the president’s actions were slam-dunk illegal. It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.

Don’t think it’s possible to bring Broke Back Mountain and the recent Iraqi elections into the same argument? Think again.

Heigh-ho. The Iraq election’s over, the media did their best to ignore it, and, judging from the rippling torsos I saw every time I switched on the TV, the press seem to reckon that that gay cowboy movie was the big geopolitical event of the last week, if not of all time. Yes, yes, I know: They’re not, technically, cowboys, they’re gay shepherds, but even Hollywood isn’t crazy enough to think it can sell gay shepherds to the world. And the point is, even if I was in the mood for a story about two rugged insecure men who find themselves strangely attracted to each other in a dark transgressive relationship that breaks all the rules, who needs Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger when you’ve got Howard Dean and Abu Musad al-Zarqawi? Yee-haw! And, if that sounds unfair, pick almost any recent statement by a big-time Dem cowboy and tell me how exactly it would differ from the pep talks Zarqawi gives his dwindling band of head-hackers — Dean arguing that America can’t win in Iraq, Barbara Boxer demanding the troops begin withdrawing on Dec. 15, John Kerry accusing American soldiers of terrorizing Iraqi women and children, Jack Murtha declaring that the U.S. Army is utterly broken. Pepper ’em with a handful of “Praise be to Allahs” and any one of those statements could have been uttered by Zarqawi.

Lest you get carried away with today’s good news from Iraq, consider what’s happening next door in Iran. The wild pronouncements of the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have gotten sporadic press ever since he called for Israel to be wiped off the map. He subsequently amended himself to say that Israel should simply be extirpated from the Middle East map and moved to some German or Austrian province. Perhaps near the site of an old extermination camp?

Except that there were no such camps, indeed no Holocaust at all, says Ahmadinejad. Nothing but “myth,” a “legend” that was “fabricated . . . under the name ‘Massacre of the Jews.’ ” This brought the usual reaction from European and American officials, who, with Churchillian rage and power, called these statements unacceptable. That something serious might accrue to Iran for this — say, expulsion from the United Nations for violating its most basic principle by advocating the outright eradication of a member state — is, of course, out of the question.

…which means it’s Mark Steyn day! Not that he doesn’t write columns on other days, but his syndicated columns for the Chicago Sun-Times have become a Sunday morning ritual for me. He is considered to be one of today’s best columnists for his brilliant prose and ability to turn a phrase that has very few peers. Needless to say, read it all, for it rocks the proverbial Casbah.